Speaker, this Premier and government know that health care is in crisis. Can you imagine going into the emergency room and hearing the pleas of a patient in another emergency room, asking, “When am I going to see a doctor? The pain is so horrific. Please, can I see a doctor? When will someone be able to help me?” That’s what we’re hearing in emergency rooms.

In London, London Health Sciences Centre has reported a 20-hour wait time in emergency rooms. And now, reports are coming from across the province that there’s a dire shortage of ambulances available.

Just last week, I heard from a constituent who had two incidents last month where they called for ambulance services and had to wait for hours for it to arrive to help his wife who had fallen and couldn’t get up. They had to cancel one of the calls because repairmen arrived and were able to help.

My question is, what is this government doing to ensure that people have emergency care services when they need them?

When will the Premier and the Minister of Health respond to the proposal and help fix the problem in London, and across the province, so people have access to ambulance services when they need them the most?

I will reiterate what Dr. Kieran Moore mentioned earlier today, which was that our most vulnerable—our youngest population, people with underlying health conditions—need to be protected. Which is why, earlier today, Dr. Kieran Moore made the recommendation strongly to mask while in public indoor settings. We are taking these actions because we understand there is a percentage of the population who cannot have a vaccine.

Having said that, we have done incredibly well in the province of Ontario to have access and make sure that people who have the ability to have that vaccine get their flu shot, keep up to date on their vaccines and their boosters, because we know that it does make a difference. We know that it keeps our youngest and most vulnerable out of our emergency departments. We know that, by doing the right thing—testing, staying home when we’re sick—we can make a difference and we can take the pressure off those most vulnerable people in our population. I would hope that the member—

We will continue to work with our funding partners to make sure that they have the investments, but we also have a collective responsibility to make sure, individually, we do the right thing and keep our youngest people safe.

We are offering and expanding the number of ambulance paramedics that are training in the province of Ontario through investments in colleges and universities. We are building a health human resources that will be second to none in Canada. We will do that. We are doing it through the College of Nurses and the College of Physicians and Surgeons. We are doing it through our health system, through retention pay. We are doing it through an expansion of our human resources training in colleges with the assistance of our partners. And we will continue to do that work, because we understand that as Ontario’s population grows, we need to make sure that we have the jobs and the resources available for those people who need it when they need it.